What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon – The Proud Young Man

    I was preaching today for the first time in about six weeks and had a lot of fun doing so. You can hear what I had to say here or read it below.

    There is something terribly tricky about young men who get excited about religion.

    I remember a number of years ago. I was training to be ordained and was doing an internship in a congregation in Edinburgh in Scotland. Like very many Episcopalians, I did not grow up as an Anglican. I’d come from a background in the Salvation Army and been through many different types of congregation on my journey. I’d been baptist and non-denominational. I’d been just about everything as I searched for the truth.

    And finally, I found what I was looking for in the Scottish Episcopal Church. There I found a church which in which beauty mattered, holiness mattered, worship mattered. It was a church which could cope with the radical theology that had excited me at college and it was a church that had the exotica of every liturgical practise of the ages.

    You know how it is.
    (more…)

    , ,

4 responses to “Counting our many blessings – Scottish Episcopal Statistics”

  1. robin webster Avatar
    robin webster

    I wonder if the church has thought sufficiently about making it possible for someone who is in a 9-5 job and perhaps is out of town on weekends to attend church? Should early evening weekday services, or early morning ones not be more in evidence?

    Reply
    1. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      There are churches which have early morning services – if I’m honest I know of none that is terribly well patronised by people who are heading out of town for the weekend.

      The question has certainly come up before as to whether it would be possible to establish a regular congregation in a city like Glasgow which met for a main weekly service at a time different to Sunday morning. (There are one or two services like this in the City of London, I think).

      St Mary’s tried for a time to use the 5-7 pm weeknight slot for events and services. This had been dropping off before I came here and it was hard to see a way forward for those slots. Good things came out of the experiment but it is interesting that the ones which continued and took on on a life of their own were not liturgical. The poetry group, for example, came from this time.

      I’m aware of a city centre church in Edinburgh which has just started to have a Saturday vigil mass like many Roman Catholic churches have. That doesn’t answer the question about people going out of town for the weekend but it is interesting that they are experimenting with that at the current time.

      Reply
      1. Jo Avatar
        Jo

        I do recall a church adjacent to a large factory that managed to hold a lunchtime communion service on a weekday. Only really works if everyone takes their lunch break, and has it at the same time, of course.

        On the wider point there are those of us who would be regular attenders at Episcopalian services were it logistically feasible. I would certainly consider myself an Episcopalian even though it would take a 28 hour round trip to enable me to attend on a Sunday. I can’t imagine there are more than a few dozen folk in that situation nationwide, of course.

        Reply
        1. Kelvin Avatar
          Kelvin

          Thanks Jo – I’m aware of a number of people who regard themselves as members of St Mary’s who can’t physically get here for reasons of geography. I’ve been trying to think through what might be done to make such links stronger for a while.

          Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • General Assembly Vocabulary – Lesson 2

    Lord High CommissionerThe Lord High Commissioner is the reigning monach's observer at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland when she herself cannot be present. He or she is effectively treated as the Sovereign for the week and ranks above everyone in Scotland except the Queen herself and the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip)…

  • General Assembly Vocabulary – Lesson 1

    Crave       1   verb               to beg, to desire eg “Don't you just crave strawberries in May?”2   noun (rare)   the fundamental intent of a Petition or Overture in Scottish Presbyterianism eg “If the crave of the petition be granted, the General Assembly if so advised shall instruct the Presbytery to take the candidate o­n trials for licence.”

  • Sermon – 16 May 2004

    A few years ago, I spent an unexpected holiday in the Aegean hopping on and off ferries and hydrofoils visiting the islands and enjoying the food and the sun. It was a peaceful holiday moving up and down the Dodecanese islands. And the highlight of the holiday was a trip to the island of Patmos…

  • Church of Fools

    I remember about 10 years ago visiting someone in a university department who was working o­n virtual reality computing. Then it involved putting o­n goggles and walking about in a virtual world which, if I remember, was based o­n Egypt. (Pyramids were easy to do in those days). Now there is the Church of Fools…